


satisfaction brought it back

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe of an Alternate Universe, F/M, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23346004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Six hours before they close the spacetime rift and a month before it reopens, Jemma walks into a nightmare.
Relationships: Will Daniels/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	satisfaction brought it back

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [slightly delayed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17974796) by [jdphoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix). 



> As you can see, this is an AU of my 'slightly delayed' universe. You don't _have_ to read that to understand this as everything necessary is explained by the end, but you might be confused along the way.
> 
> Fair warning that I'm a little meaner to Fitz than I usually am in this. I don't think unfairly so - the only actions he takes that I personally consider out of line happen entirely off screen for a reason - but while I consider the feelings he expresses to be completely understandable and valid, they aren't _good_ feelings. If you're a fan of Fitz and don't want to see your fave doing anything problematic you'll wanna give this one a pass.

The coat’s a lost cause. That much was obvious as soon as Will felt the fire licking along his back, but the tinkling of jewels falling like rain as he eases the damn thing off his shoulders is even more proof. They drip-drop around his feet with every move he makes and no wonder, when he finally gets it off and takes a look it proves to be more hole than coat.

Not that Will’s broken up about it. Those jewels may have saved his life back there but they made the coat ostentatious as hell. “As befits an emissary of the Kasius family,” he can practically hear Taryan say as he examines what used to be an intricate pattern of ancient Kree runes detailing the family’s most famed exploits.

The jewels he should probably try to save, he thinks with some annoyance. That means no tossing the stinking thing. He sighs and folds it carefully into a trash bag. (What Taryan would say to _that_ , he doesn’t even consider.)

He should also leave. Much as he hates to give into the pragmatism and judgment he blames on the Kree blood in his veins, the interdimensional rift reopening today only proves what he already knew: SHIELD is weak. His hosts are trying to pass off the skeleton crew running this place as proof of how state-of-the-art it is, too good for just anyone to be assigned here. And that might have flown if Taryan had sent Faulnak or Azeth or really _any_ actual Kree, but that’s why he sent Will. He can see this place is at least thirty years old, probably closer to fifty. Most of the tech they’re using is recent additions patched together with the old. It’s shoddy and a clear sign they’re struggling.

If the Kasius family wants a strong ally on Earth, they’ll stick with Hale. Let her make peace with SHIELD on her own if she wants but these people are useless to the Kree.

And that- that is _definitely_ Taryan’s blood talking.

He tears off his shirt—it comes away in one piece, so that’s a good sign—and turns his back on the mirror he found hanging off a closet door. Far from being a sign this lab is in use, it highlights its lack of it. The mirror, the box of spare trash bags, they’re the kinds of things that get forgotten and left behind when a place gets abandoned.

His reflection chuckles. That must be why he picked it to get cleaned up in; he fits right in.

“There are benefits,” he tells his reflection. Not to being cast off and abandoned, that pretty much sucks every time it’s happened to him. But to SHIELD. They’re needy, so desperate for help they let a supposed Kree have near free run of their base.

But why?

Something’s scaring them and it isn’t the rift. If it was, they would’ve asked him to look at it and maybe if they had, the damn containment unit they pieced together wouldn’t have torn apart.

A shiver starts at the base of the scars on his back, right where a flare once drilled deep between his ribs and set his corpse on fire. It trails out, sweeping along nerve endings in a pain-free reminder of what it felt like to be dragged back to life in a body not yet ready to support it.

It’d be nice to say it’s the astronaut in him, but Will’s pretty sure his distaste for fire these days is more PTSD than training.

He tosses the shirt aside and pulls his mask out of the sink. The water’s cleared out the smoke from the breathing apparatus but it needs to dry out before he can put it back on or he’ll be spitting out water for the rest of the day. Not for the first time he thinks he should’ve brought a spare, but he didn’t exactly plan on spending this much time planetside.

“Didn’t you?” he asks his reflection. They share a bitter smile.

That’s his problem, always has been. He can’t leave well enough alone. Curiosity killed the cat, as they say, and he’s running out of lives. Probably wasted one pushing her out of the way of the blast back there.

He’d like to say this all could’ve been avoided, but he knows himself too well. Just like he had to go into that haunted mine as a kid because no one else would, just like he had to go to an alien world to see it for himself, the second Taryan told him he was coming back to Earth this was a done deal. It was his chance, one he never thought he’d have, and once he saw it he just had to _know_.

“And now you do,” he tells his reflection. “You happy about it?”

The poor bastard in the mirror doesn’t answer, but his expression says it all.

No. No, he’s not happy at all.

He’s _relieved;_ of course he is. But that’s not the same thing.

Knowing the woman he gave his life for is alive and well is nice and all, but knowing she moved on long ago—no matter how much he doesn’t want her wasting her life pining for a dead guy—is something else.

The scrape of a heel against the metal floor is all the warning he gets, just enough time to curse himself for taking the mask off at all, breathing be damned, and not nearly enough to turn away. (Not that it’d do much good. He’s half naked here and there’s really no hiding he’s not a Kree. Mask or no, there are gonna be questions after this.)

His eyes snap up to meet brown ones he still sees in his best dreams. _This_ is what they mean about curiosity killing. He can’t help but wish that damn blast took him out when it had the chance, it’d be better than whatever comes next.

<<<<<

Six hours before they close the spacetime rift and a month before it reopens in a fiery explosion, Jemma walks into a nightmare. Not uncommon at the moment, given everyone’s worst fears are running freely about the Lighthouse, but this particular nightmare is more off-putting than the rest.

Her first thought is that it’s not a nightmare at all. It’s a dream. A beautiful, perfect dream she’s had a thousand times, both sleeping and awake. But the specifics quickly prove that to be a flawed assumption.

It’s difficult to see given the angles and the positioning, but Jemma knows herself and that is very definitely her. A near perfect double of herself wearing those godawful clothes she spent months in on Maveth (though she notes they’re decidedly more ragged in this vision) balanced precariously on the edge of a desk. Balanced because one of her legs is braced against the side of the desk itself and the other is wrapping around her companion’s leg, urging him closer. He is quite the accommodating partner. Even while kissing her senseless (Jemma imagines), he presses his hips into hers and holds her face between his hands, cupping her jaw in a tender grip.

That’s what tells her this is wrong. The gesture is sweet enough, but not quite right. Will loved her hair. He loved to dig his hands in it, to bury his face in it while he was inside her. Even their most innocent of kisses were an opportunity for his fingers to stray into it, if only to brush it briefly as he pulled away.

This, the way this image of him is holding her doppelganger, is much more the way Fitz holds her.

And with that thought, she finally takes note of the only other real person in the room. It’s entirely possible he’s another piece of the illusion, but unless this is some unacknowledged manifestation of her own issues regarding Fitz’s reaction to Will, the horror-struck expression he wears certainly implies this is his nightmare.

“Fitz?” As the full ramifications of that dawn, she’s afraid her voice is somewhat choked.

His head snaps so abruptly in her direction she fears he might give himself whiplash. “Jemma. I-”

“Oh.” That breathy gasp is the other Jemma, a wicked smile on her face as she tucks her chin over Will’s shoulder to regard the onlookers.

“Fitz,” she says, still in a voice that would sound more appropriate coming from a buxom cartoon character. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Really?” Jemma asks, more than a little insulted.

“I know we had a date,” her double continues, practically pasting herself to Will while he kisses his way down her neck. “But-” she giggles over something Will is doing to her- “Will _saved_ me. He’s a hero. You didn’t really think you could compete with that.”

“ _Fitz_ ,” Jemma says again. Standing orders are to shoot the nightmares on sight and by all rights Fitz should have done so long before she arrived, but she assumes he has as much of an issue with shooting her double as she has with shooting Will’s. (Though of course his reluctance doesn’t stem from a certain encounter with a self-appointed god doing his best Will impression.) Her fingers brush Fitz’s hand to take it, to pull them both away, but he’s too engrossed in the display before them to complete the contact.

“I love him,” the other Jemma says dreamily and Fitz’s whole body jerks with the blow.

Will pulls back to stroke the false Jemma’s cheek. Again, Jemma is struck by the wrongness of the illusion and how perfect it would be if only the motion were a few inches to the right.

“Really?” he asks, in a voice somewhat too rough.

“How could I not fall in love with you?”

“That’s quite enough of that,” Jemma says as the two descend into another deep kiss. She grabs Fitz’s hand and drags him out into the hall, shutting the door on that particular nightmare.

He snatches his hand back as soon as they’re more comfortably alone (they were alone a moment ago, obviously, but the visions do give the impression they’re real people), though it isn’t fast enough she doesn’t notice he’s shaking.

She gives him a moment. He’s just been faced with the physical embodiment of something he fears, she would be the worst sort of monster to press him immediately. But when he only continues to stand and stare into the open space beside her, so clearly _avoiding_ her, she has to say something.

“Tell me it’s old.”

There’s a wildness to his gaze when it meets hers that she doesn’t like at all. That barely restrained emotion reminds her a little too much of her own nightmare version of him, one she’s spent weeks telling herself was as false as the version of herself who’s no doubt by now having sex with Will behind that door.

“Tell me that’s an old nightmare. Not something you-”

“Not what? Not something I’m afraid of anymore?” He chokes out a laugh. “Well, it obviously is or it wouldn’t be here, now would it?”

She takes a step back, hoping to diffuse the situation. “Why are you angry? It wasn’t real.”

“No? So you didn’t sleep with him while I was breaking my back trying to bring you home?”

She gapes. She was stranded, thought never to see the Earth or him ever again. “That isn’t fair.”

Somehow that seems to break through his mounting anger. He deflates. His expression falls. He looks like her Fitz again.

“No, it’s not.” His mouth thins. “But neither is me being your last choice.”

“You’re _not_ -”

“Aren’t I? I told you how I felt and you _left_.”

Jemma bites her tongue. She is _not_ getting into a fight about her going undercover again, not this many years later.

“And for months all I could get out of you was shop talk. This mission or that project. And then Trip died-”

“Don’t,” she says in warning. She can see where this is going and they’ll both regret it if he keeps on this train of thought.

“-and you finally gave me a shot. But then Will shows up and you practically throw yourself at him.”

“You know that’s not what happened! Will was- He was special-” She chokes on the words. Will meant more to her than she can express. He still does. She wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for him and his sacrifice. “I love _you_. I chose to be with _you_. I’m going to-”

Those last two words, her warm reminder that she’s going to _marry him_ , are lost under his question. “Did you?” He looks genuinely stricken by the uncertainty. “You waited until you knew he was dead.”

She takes a deep breath, willing herself to calm down. One of them needs to be the level-headed one here. “Why does that matter?” she asks him in a tone she hopes invites him to be reasonable about this. “If Daisy one day falls in love again, will it mean any less because she loved Lincoln first?”

“Because I’m not someone you met after Will died. I loved you before. _You_ should’ve-”

He snaps his mouth shut, realizing his mistake before he makes it. Jemma knows she should respect his restraint and ignore the statement they both know he was going to make, but the very idea of it is too much.

“I should’ve loved you?” she asks, level-headedness forgotten.

Fitz has the good grace to wince. “That’s not what I meant. Put yourself in my shoes. What if you fell in love with me years ago and I never looked at you twice? If I kept flirting with our friends and Hydra agents-”

“I _did not know_ what Ward was and how dare you use that against me! How would you like it if I used the Framework against you?”

He stands stiff. “I think you just did.”

Well, he’s right about that.

Jemma’s anger seems to drain away, but unfortunately it doesn’t take the hurt she’s feeling with it. “Are you really jealous of a dead man?” she asks and is afraid she isn’t quite able to keep the derision out of her tone.

“Would you be with me if he were alive?” Fitz asks with much the same feeling.

The hallway seems terribly empty all of a sudden, as if all their blustering filled it up before now and all that’s left is just them. She hopes they weren’t too loud. She hopes none of the others heard. Especially not Coulson. Given his condition…

“What do we do now?” Fitz asks. “We’re supposed to be getting married in a few hours, everyone’s getting ready.” He looks so helpless, not at all the fearsome figure he was when he was throwing barbs at her.

But that doesn’t mean that man is gone. The things he said, they still matter. They can’t simply be forgotten and shouldn’t be.

She spares a moment to wish they were regular people with regular lives. There would be arrangements already made and guests to inform and family to disappoint- She holds back a bitter smile. She supposes it wouldn’t be all that different if they were regular people.

She pushes those emotions aside as she’s so used to doing. They’ll only get in the way of what needs to be done.

“So we get married,” she says.

>>>>>

After the rift reopens and Jemma sees Agent Irving in the capable hands of one of the surgeons Mike brought with him, she volunteers to seek out Captain Dred. (Irving may never walk again but at least he’s alive, which is more than Jemma would be if Dred hadn’t pushed her to the ground just before the rift reopened.) One of the other agents Mike brought along points her to one of the unused labs, saying he saw the Kree enter it. His tone when he delivered this news clearly communicated that he hadn’t followed and didn’t think Jemma should either on account of the mood Dred appeared to be in.

Jemma doesn’t bother to ask how he knows such a thing. Despite the mask he wears constantly, she’s learned that Dred can be quite expressive in his mannerisms. It’s easy to imagine the anger and frustration a man who takes such care with his appearance would have felt after being struck down so dramatically – and in front of his near-enemies, no less.

Perhaps this will help with that. Not his shame—Jemma seeking him out when he wants to be alone is unlikely to make a positive difference there—but with those bridges Coulson is hoping to build. He believes Hydra is on their way to causing the disaster they’re all working to circumvent and that the best way to avert it might just be gaining the support of Hale’s most powerful allies. Hence his decision to welcome the Kree emissary into their base while they work out a truce.

Up to now he’s been rather standoffish, but with any luck Jemma’s sincere thanks that he saved her life today will help warm him up to humanity.

She can hear him moving about in the indicated lab and, as she turns into the doorway, opens her mouth to begin with those thanks, only to lose her voice when she sees it isn’t Dred at all. It’s Will.

Alone, without her doppelganger making it obvious he’s not real, he’s much more affecting. Emotion threatens to choke her and she swallows it down, forcing herself to recognize the reality of the situation. He is _not real_. He’s only-

A nightmare.

That realization and the memory of the last time she saw a vision of him has her sweeping the room in search of Fitz. When she doesn’t find him, she’s forced to take another look at the vision in front of her.

“Jemma,” he says.

She darts a glance into the hall and, finding no Fitz there either, she closes the door and steps farther inside. “I know I shouldn’t indulge you,” she says, pacing a fair distance from the vision as to get a better view of it, “but I have to ask: are you mine?”

“What?” He’s so lifelike, he actually sounds shocked by the question. But just like the last time, he’s wrong. The details don’t quite match reality. In fact, they don’t seem to match reality at all beyond the bare minimum.

While she can appreciate the lack of a shirt, the scars on his chest aren’t right. The appendectomy scar on his lower abdomen is there, as is the shrapnel wound in his shoulder and the jagged cut he attributed to Hive, but there are others now. Too many. Almost as if the vision is making up for the lack of beard by overcompensating with scars. It would have been better off keeping the beard, as its absence only draws attention to the odd blue markings curling up his neck and over his cheek.

“Oh,” she says sadly. “You are, aren’t you?”

He shakes his head, a smile curling at one corner of his lips. “I’m what?”

“My nightmare.”

He seems as surprised as she is that she’s standing toe-to-toe with him when she says the words. She couldn’t help it any more than she can help reaching up to trace her fingers in the air over the blue lines. (Does she not dare touch him because she’s afraid of driving him to violence or because she’s afraid he’ll disappear?) The vision is quite complete; she can feel the heat coming off him and the puff of his breath as he struggles to breathe steadily.

“Why do you say that?” he asks.

“This is what Hive did to you.”

“Hive?”

“It,” she corrects automatically. It’s so strange how the vision can get so much right and so much wrong at the same time.

She follows the blue line until it disappears over his shoulder. She should stop there. She should leave. She should shoot him and be done with it. But she finds herself continuing her exploration. Her hand drops from that scar to the next, tracing one after another. She knows they’re not real. Will died before she even made it through the portal back to Earth. He didn’t suffer and he certainly didn’t gain any scars from his fight with Hive.

She stills. Her hand remains frozen where it is over his appendix scar. Even her breathing stops. Everything but her eyes, which drift to the counter next to him where an ornate mask sits.

“You’re-”

She sways and he catches her. That doesn’t prove anything. A vision of her very nearly suffocated Elena the last time they went through this. But somehow the _way_ he catches her is enough. Those rough hands, so gentle when they hold her, are so very Will.

“You can’t be real,” she says. She sounds like she’s on the verge of crying. She should curb that but _oh_ , if he is here…

His hands are sweeping up and down her arms, warming them, reminding her with every stroke of how he used to hold her when her grief got to be too much.

“The Kree,” he says, making it sound like an apology. “They found what was left of me. They brought me back.”

She nods. Those are leaps she could have made herself if she weren’t so busy questioning his very presence.

She reaches out, this time to truly touch the scars on his face, but he steps back and catches her hands in his before she can. His thumb sweeps over her knuckles. There’s more strength in his hands than there was, more flesh on his bones. It’s all so different and that only proves it’s truly him.

“I know it was stupid,” he says, “but I just wanted to see if I could see you. I wanted to see you okay.”

“I’m fine. You saved me.”

He nods, ducking his head for a brief moment before meeting her eyes again. His glisten. “I wasn’t going to do anything. I didn’t want to make trouble.”

She steps closer, into the space he’s put between them. “Why would you ever be trouble?”

One of his thumbs goes still and the other nearly does. It sweeps back and forth over one of the fingers of her left hand. She looks down, seeing the ring there as if for the first time.

“Oh.”

“Congratulations,” he says. He actually sounds sincere.

He tries to release her, but she tightens her grip, refusing to let him go.

“What if I wasn’t?” she asks.

“Wasn’t what?”

She tips her head down to the left and squeezes that hand.

He laughs. “Don’t make me think about that.”

“You would what? Kiss me? Sweep me off my feet? Win me back?”

He shakes his head and looks away – but he doesn’t force her to let him go, that means something. “Now you’re my nightmare,” he says.

“Not a dream?” she teases. He confessed to her once how he would dream of her on Maveth, how they nearly drove him insane before she stopped looking so hard for a way home she could finally see what was right in front of her face.

“Only because it has to end. Don’t do this, Jemma. You’re with Fitz. I knew you would be-”

“And you? Are you with someone?” Memories of Sinara flash through her head. If all Kree women are as beautiful and lethal as her, she can’t imagine it would be hard for Will to find one to fall for.

“You could say that.”

Her grip loosens and Will takes his opportunity to slip away. He grabs up his mask and fiddles with the mouthpiece.

“I’m happy for you,” she says.

His wry smile tells her she sounds exactly as happy as she feels. “You wanna try that again?” He chuckles at her sour expression. “It’s okay. You shouldn’t be. I’m with the Kasius family. They brought me back, rebuilt me. By Kree law, that means they own me.”

Her hand flies to her ear. She spent a matter of weeks as Kasius’ slave and it was torturous. Will’s been with the Kree for _years_.

“Don’t look so sad. This is a good thing, really.”

She lets out a slightly hysterical laugh. “And how, exactly, is you being a _slave_ a good thing?”

He catches her hands again. “It means I can protect you. I may be a slave, but I’m an honored one. Taryan trusts me to carry the honor of his house, he trusts my judgment. I can use that trust to make sure that however this alliance goes, it ends with you safe.” He squeezes her hands. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

He’s such a self-sacrificing idiot. Which, incidentally, is a phrase Daisy has used to refer to her more than once. Perhaps that’s why she likes him.

“What if that’s not all I want?”

“Jemma. You’re married.”

“No, I’m not.”

He goes still. “You’re-”

“Not married,” she supplies.

“But.” He lifts her hand, displaying the damning ring.

“Right. That.” She steps back to lean against the counter, figuring this requires some perspective. “If you’re not Will,” she says, “if this is some sort of con, know that I will kill you.”

“Fair.”

She hesitates a moment more, knowing that once she tells him this there’s no taking it back. “Coulson is dying. We’re trying to save him, but…” She shakes herself, not wanting to delve into those emotions right now. “Fitz and I _were_ engaged, but we broke it off. We had already planned a small ceremony with the team. Coulson wanted to see us settled happily before- before whatever happens happens. We agreed to go through the motions for his sake. It wouldn’t have been legal in any case, so it wasn’t as though it was difficult to simply let it happen.”

“So you pretend for Coulson’s health?” Will looks exactly as judgmental about it as Daisy and Elena did when they found out.

“Essentially, yes.”

“Are you sure you’re both pretending? I can’t imagine faking a relationship with you and not feeling something.”

He might have a point there. Fitz certainly made it clear during his mad scientist episode that he considered her his wife despite their agreement. “You might have noticed Fitz hasn’t been around – at all. A few days after the wedding we discovered he was suffering some lingering psychological effects from a trauma the team went through last year. He proved himself to be a danger to others and has been locked up ever since.”

“So he might not even know the marriage is fake. If he’s in as bad shape as you say-”

“Oh, he knows. Trust me.” Privately she suspects that might have contributed to the extent of his break. But whether it did or not, his actions have made it clear he knows that _she_ considered their vows a charade. His unwillingness to accept that is his own issue.

“Huh.”

“What?” She’s seen that look on Will’s face before, usually when he was realizing how annoyingly persistent she could be.

“I just realized. If I’d made it back to Earth and you were pulling this stunt, I would’ve hung back, let Fitz have his shot at winning you over.”

“That is a terrible idea.” If he does that, she’s going to have to seduce him, and that will be quite difficult when Coulson needs to go on thinking she’s devoted to Fitz. Not impossible, of course, but more trouble than she cares to go through when she could just have Will back already.

“Yeah, it is.” He steps forward, his hips pressing hers back against the counter and his hands digging into her hair as he tips her head up. “I just never realized before how much the Kree changed me. Guess I oughta thank them, huh?”

“Later,” she says.

“Later,” he agrees and kisses her.


End file.
